Golden Knights inch closer to Stanley Cup with Game 4 win
SUNRISE, Fla. — The shattered sticks of William Karlsson and Zach Whitecloud on the FLA Live Arena ice told the tale of the Golden Knights’ victory Saturday.
For the second straight game, the Knights needed to defend a late one-goal lead against the Florida Panthers. They slipped Thursday. The team — which has rallied around the mantra “it hurts to win” this postseason — sold out to prevent it from happening again, whether it took a stick, a shin or anything else solid enough to step in front of the puck.
The Knights survived a 2:26 stretch with goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky out of the net to close out a 3-2 win in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final.
That gave them a 3-1 series lead and moved them within one win of their ultimate goal.
The Knights can clinch the first championship in franchise history Tuesday in Game 5 at T-Mobile Arena.
“We had a couple huge shot blocks,” captain Mark Stone said. “Guys sold out to get it done.”
The Knights’ final defensive stand in many ways showed what makes this team so special.
It’s a committed group. The Knights blocked 30 shots Saturday, one fewer than the number they allowed on net. Three of those blocks came with Bobrovsky on the bench. They did whatever it took to box out in front of goaltender Adin Hill and prevent chances from getting through their solid defensive structure.
The Knights also rarely make the same mistake twice.
They let Game 3 get away when Panthers leading scorer Matthew Tkachuk scored a six-on-five goal with Bobrovsky on the bench with 2:13 remaining in regulation. Left wing Carter Verhaeghe scored in overtime to give Florida a 3-2 win.
The Knights executed much better the second time around to improve to 5-1 in the playoffs after a loss.
“I wasn’t thinking, ‘Here we go again’” coach Bruce Cassidy said. “One thing our team does well is they respond to some adversity or whatever hasn’t gone well.”
The Knights were in that position again after surging out of the gate.
Center Chandler Stephenson scored his second goal 7:28 into the second period. Karlsson added on 3:36 later to put the Knights up 3-0.
In many ways, it was fitting Stephenson led the charge. His line with Stone and left wing Brett Howden, as well as defensemen Nic Hague and Zach Whitecloud, were on the ice for all three Florida goals Thursday.
Stone had two assists in Game 4, and Hague and Whitecloud were both plus-3.
“We just didn’t want to lose,” said Stephenson, who had his second multigoal game of the playoffs to become the third Knights player with at least 10 this postseason. “We wanted to push as best we could and try to take their fans out of it. We did a lot of good things in the last game and just wanted to continue that tonight. We just tried to have a killer instinct.”
Like they did in Game 3, the Panthers still found a way to push back.
Defenseman Brandon Montour got his team on the board with a wild goal with 3:51 left in the second period. His shot bounced off defenseman Brayden McNabb’s skate and defenseman Shea Theodore’s ankle to get past Hill, who could do nothing but smile about it.
Florida captain Aleksander Barkov reduced the deficit to one with a one-timer 3:50 into the third. The announced crowd of 19,986 — egged on to start the game by recent PGA Championship winner Brooks Koepka — sprang to life waving their white rally towels featuring the names of the Panthers’ previously defeated foes.
But the Knights dug in to ensure their lead didn’t disappear.
Not even a late delay of game penalty on defenseman Alex Pietrangelo or Karlsson’s and Whitecloud’s broken sticks could stop the team from the task at hand.
Hill added three more saves with six attackers on the ice to finish with 29 in his 10th win of the playoffs. He is the first goaltender in NHL history to get 10 victories in a postseason after not playing in the first round. His heroics mean the Stanley Cup will be in the building for Game 5.
The Knights are one win from making owner Bill Foley’s “Cup in six” prediction come true. It would take a total turnaround for it not to happen.
Teams that go up 3-1 in the final have a 36-1 series record. And as the Knights showed Saturday, their willingness to sacrifice themselves in search of a win makes them almost impossible to beat twice in a row.
“We didn’t feel like we gave up a whole lot,” Pietrangelo said. “(Hill) made the saves that we needed him to make, and we scored when we needed to. We faced a little bit of adversity there in the third period, they were coming at us, but we got through it.”
Contact Ben Gotz at bgotz@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BenSGotz on Twitter.